Chasing the long tail of new media
Album: Downtown
Year: 1964
. . .
This is the first song I ever loved.
And given the fact that it came out when I was two, falling in love with this song might actually be my very first memory, period. Well, that, and learning to read.
Which may or may not be true, but if my first memories involve music and reading, it means that I was essentially on-brand from the very start, so let’s print the legend, shall we?
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1551: Petula Clark – “Downtown”
Album: Wanted Dread and Alive
Year: 1981
. . .
Yes, the title is slightly cheesy, and the lyrics aren’t all that original, but fuck all that, “Wanted Dread And Alive” is quite possibly my all-time favorite reggae song.
Maybe “Armagideon Time,” “Book of Rules,” “Put It On” or “Funky Kingston” could have claims to that title, but “Wanted Dread And Alive” has absolutely killed me ever since I first spun it at the pre-air KFSR in 1981.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1550: Peter Tosh – “Wanted Dread and Alive”
Album: Equal Rights
Year: 1977
. . .
They never covered anything from it, but given that it came out in the same year as their debut, and given their penchant for reggae and politics, I can’t imagine that The Clash didn’t on Peter Tosh’s Equal Rights album, especially the stellar title track, one of the most uncompromising songs Tosh ever wrote.
After all, the affinity between punk and reggae in the U.K. was so strong in 1977 that Bob Marley put out a single celebrating it, the utopian “Punky Reggae Party,” but compared to the powerhouse “Equal Rights,” or Culture’s “Calling Rasta For I” — which also featured Sly and Robbie — Marley’s effort felt a bit slight.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1549: Peter Tosh – “Equal Rights”
Album: Equal Rights
Year: 1977
. . .
One of the first reggae albums I ever purchased, Peter Tosh’s 1977 Equal Rights is also one of my all-time favorite reggae albums, mixing and matching furious political commentary with thrilling and propulsive music.
Mixing and matching Wailers vets like keyboardist Earl Lindo and guitarist Al Anderson, Equal Rights was also one of the earliest albums that the crack rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare played on, and their incredible groove was just part of the reason Equal Rights sounded so great, especially compared to the somewhat thin Legalize It.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1548: Peter Tosh – “Stepping Razor”
Album: Legalize It
Year: 1976
. . .
First off, it’s just a coincidence of the alphabet that “Legalize It” follows “Puff, The Magic Dragon” in Certain Songs, especially since — as I pointed out yesterday — “Puff, The Magic Dragon” is most certainly not a weed song.
Whereas, “Legalize It” absolutely is. Perhaps the most weed song ever, almost instant shorthand for cannabis usage in popular culture.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1547: Peter Tosh – “Legalize It”
Album: The Best of Peter, Paul & Mary: (Ten) Years Together
Year: 1963
. . .
Weirdly enough, there weren’t a lot of records in my house when I was growing up. While my parents were definitely into the 1950s rock and roll of their teen years, the responsibilities of children and their belief that pop music was something that you outgrew meant that there were no Beatles or Stones or even Monkees records in my house when I was a kid.
But there was Peter, Paul & Mary. Or at least their greatest hits album, which came out the year I turned eight. So I listened to it a lot as a pre-teen — though not nearly as much as the Bob & Ray and (sorry) Bill Cosby albums that they also had around that time, not to mention the Winnie-The-Pooh and Royal Guardsmen records that I wore out — but pretty much rejected it when I hit my teen years.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1546: Peter, Paul & Mary – “Puff, The Magic Dragon”
Album: Mavericks
Year: 1991
. . .
In case you don’t recognize the names, Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey were the co-founders and principal songwriters of The dB’s, the legendary east coast power pop band who started out their career with two great albums, 1981’s Stands for Decibels and 1982’s Repercussion before Stamey left in 1992.
While Stamey released some solo albums, Holsapple carried on as the main songwriter of the dB’s, and while things took a hit on 1984’s Like This, I still think that their fourth album, 1987’s The Sound of Music is one of the greatest power pop albums of all time.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1545: Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey – “I Know You Will”
Album: So
Year: 1986
. . .
After putting out four albums in five years — Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel and Peter Gabriel, cos this is the last time I get to make this joke — Peter Gabriel slowed it down a bit, and his next studio album didn’t come out until 1986.
Of course, he didn’t disappear: a lot of folks loved his 1983 double live album as well as his all-instrumental soundtrack for the film Birdy, but I’m sure people wondered if he was going to keep the momentum he’d built up in the U.S. when “Shock The Monkey” — driven by massive MTV play — became a top 30 hit, because back then, four years between albums was a long time.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1544: Peter Gabriel – “Red Rain”
Album: Sun City
Year: 1985
. . .
The final song on Peter Gabriel was a long, haunting dirge entitled “Biko,” which was all about the death of anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko in police custody in 1977.
And while it’s just a bit long and dirgy for me to love it as much as I loved other songs on that album, I didn’t really know what it was all about until I went back into it in the wake of a whole album that it directly inspired, Artists United Against Apartheid’s Sun City.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1543: Peter Gabriel – “No More Apartheid”
Album: Peter Gabriel
Year: 1980
. . .
It probably goes to my age that two of the running subplots of Certain Songs are 1960s/1970s songs about SPACE! and 1980s songs about nuclear destruction, the latter of which “Games Without Frontiers” is an absolutely stellar example.
Featuring spooky guitar and synth noises, a disjointed but steady drum beat, “Games Without Frontiers” opens with a Kate Bush-sung hook that I misheard for, well, decades really. I can’t remember if there was a lyric sheet on my copy of Peter Gabriel, but what I’ve heard her sing was:
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1542: Peter Gabriel – “Games Without Frontiers”